"Generalisation... Civilisation... Caramelisation..." -Morven

Whenever Morven cooked dinner during our time in Adelaide, he would start pretending to be a host of a US cooking show. He's dialog goes something like this, "Ooh boy... Look at the beautiful colour... Mmm.. Caramelisation... Generalisation... Education... Automation... Civilisation... Globalisation... (Long pause as he thinks of another -tion word)."

I'll never forget that. Not only because it was funny but because he set off the smoke alarm like 3 to 4 times? Argh.

I wanted to make caramelised onions some time back. I bought the onions and kept them close to 3 weeks. When I wanted to use them, I saw maggots crawling around in it! It was uber disgusting! I felt bad the onions were wasted because of my procrastination.

Just 2 days ago my mum bought onions.

I cried painfully! :'(

Morven! This is the reeaal deal!

I'll make sure he reads this. Haha! You have to cook it for a very long time before you see results. I used red onions. I'll try white ones another time and see if I can achieve a stronger brown colour.

The rice was mixed with the egg+parmesan cheese sauce used in the carbonara. Overall very happy! :D

Puzzle Time!

I went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum at San Francisco and saw this puzzle. Thought it might occupy my time if I'm bored. I have yet to come up with a solution. Many Sundays have passed.

Try it! :D

The End Is Near.

Non, it's not the end of the world. Instead, it's

9 more official days!

And it seems like it refers to many other things too.

Congratulations Kenny + Audrey!

One for the history books in the Sim and Shen family. I was waiting for the professional photos to come so this post will look good. Haha.

To Kenny and Audrey: May you two have love abundant for each other and that love carries on forever. Everything else will follow behind it. :]

To Jia Mei yan: I wish you all the best and your new family! Thanks for listening to my stories and then falling asleep after that. And somehow, I always remember this one particular time during Junior Soldier class, the older ones were teasing me and then you stepped in and said, "Hey, don't bully my brother k!". It has been 10 years since you said that? Hahaha. Though you spoke little compared to Mark and myself who were always shouting in the house, your presence in the house was always felt. The family and I will definitely miss you but remember we'll always be there for you. :) Take care and I love you Aud. Now you're the odd one out! You're married! Hahaha.

Burdgert King

Disclaimer: All prices mentioned below are in US dollars.

The last day at Lake Tahoe, we took our lunch at Burger King. Fast food ain't cheap and one meal cost about $6.95. But on the whole menu, there was a section that wrote "BK Value Menu" and everything under there was super duper cheap! I got really excited when I saw the Whopper Jr. going for just $1! Many items were also going at $1 like Double Cheeseburger, Spicy CHICK'N CRISP Sandwich, small onion rings, small fries, small soft drink and Chicken Tenders (4 pieces).

What awesome deals! We wanted to fill our stomachs, so budget we did! Many many of this and that burgers, many many fries, rings and tenders, and was it 1 small soft drink? Hahaha. Every fast food outlet has free flow drinks.

I ordered a double cheese burger and the chick n crisp burger and stacked them up!

So it's equivalent to a Mega Mac? No la. Burger King's burger volume is smaller than Macs. That's how I managed to eat the 7 patty one last time. But it felt good having so much to chew. Satisfying you know. I went Ikea once and had Grilled Dory with cream sauce. With fish being soft and easy to swallow, it felt like the food portion was very little. :(

We spent about $24~ for 6 of us? Nice. Super budget. Wish they have these $1 deals in Singapore too! :)

From Holland?

At last, it has been made! For weeks I have been looking for the day when I can make this. I first saw it in the movie Julie and Julia. The main character Julie Powell made hollandaise sauce and used it as an artichoke dip. She briefly read out the recipe and I thought, "Wow, so little ingredients, not complex, and looks really good! Must try!"

I used this recipe. There were others that said to use a double boiler but I did not want to do it that way. It felt too troublesome. I'm sure it can be done if you have good heat control. It was because of this recipe that I bought my mixing bowl! That will be covered in another post. :)

The main ingredient is butter. Loads of butter! We melted 1 and 3/4 sticks of it! We're clarifying the butter here.

Oohh! Fattening natural butter!!

Joel and I were holding up the pots during the mixing of butter to the sabayon. So our forearms kinda ached a bit after that. Hahaha, we need more training.

The colour of hollandaise sauce is very nice. Light yellow cream. However, I felt it should be less yellow but Dora and Joel said it's okay! Maybe I try another time with less yolk. We added 4 yolks instead of 3 because apparently my eggs were not "large" enough. I'm going for 3 the next round. I'm also going to try more pepper and less lemon.

Well, that was dinner. Eggs Benedict without the bacon and English muffin. Substitute by Wagyu beef patty, wholemeal and white bread. Hehe. :D

After dinner, we still had leftover sauce to do this! Port wine courtesy of Joel and a Big Bag of Calbee Hot and Spicy Potato Chips!

What's this?

Pedxing!

At first, I couldn't understand it. Stared at it longer and I saw the light.

I'm sure you can too. Interesting sign.

Mini Frosty

On the last day at Lake Tahoe, we decided to go and visit the lake. The shore's sand was covered with snow. White Sands? Hur hur.

It was HUUUUGE!

The mountains in view were magnificent. So vast and big! The snow makes the mountains look more exciting. Imagine just green slopes. Will the snow melt at such altitudes?

We strolled around, attracted attention from others by "zhi lian"ing. We also saw some snowboarders making a low ramp for themselves. Afterwhich they filmed themselves tackling it. As we left the beach, we saw snowmen (2 only) standing in the open patch, and then we decided to make a snowman for ourselves too.

I could pretend I'm making a snowman but secretly preparing ammo for a fight.

Packing ice is simple. Just collect shavings and plaster it over. I tried combining 2 balls together but it doesn't grow.

Frosty needs to look good.

Frosty: "Voila! In view a humble vaudevillian veteren, cast vicariously as both victim and..."

If you focus your attention to the top left, you'll see big daddy snowman there. He is a whole lot bigger than what we made. And it took us 20-25 minutes making this puny fella. It would probably take an hour or more to fatten him up to big daddy's size. We couldn't spare the time.

After we made good use of him, we killed him off. Run before David Caruso shows up! (~You won't get fooled again!~ music plays)

Sliding on Ice Kachang

Let's kick start the US Tales with Lake Tahoe! It was chosen because it was where we could experience snow! There is North and South Lake Tahoe but South was taken because it's nearer. The lake is very big. Singapore's total area is 710 square kilometers while Lake Tahoe's area is already 496.21 square kilometers! That's more than half of our island!

We were there from 29-31 December 09. It was really cold. In San Fran and LA, I could walk around with just a t-shirt, a long sleeve piece and jeans on. The nights will get colder but it was still manageable. I got down from the bus at Lake Tahoe with exactly what I mentioned above. And then I started to shiver just standing there so I decided to put on the gloves and beanie. I just had to test the temperature! :P

That evening we took a walk around the shops. We entered this shop named 'Heavenly' to enroll ourselves for a day's lesson on snowboarding. The mountain was called Heavenly too so I conclude the shop is the official school for that mountain. It cost us each USD $160 + GST. Not to mention the rental of waterproof pants and my jacket. But it was all worth it!! I was totally excited and happy!

The next morning, we actually wanted to go earlier so that we can stop at the first stop of the ride up the mountain to look at scenery, but grabbing our boards and putting on the boots took some time so that didn't happen. The ride up on the gondola takes 25 minutes which means plenty of photo time! :)

The picture above shows very little bit of the mountain. I initially thought that was all the mountain that snowboarders and skiers had but I was wrong! There is a lot more mountain behind it! It snowed lightly and temperatures reached -7 degrees Celsius. Because of the low temperature, it was tough to take out your camera to snap pictures. The cold would start biting your hands. If you put your gloves on, you won't be able to use it properly with the fat fingers.

Up there, we met our instructor, Michael Gutman. He gave me a cool impression of himself. He wore a helmet, sunglasses and mitts! Always smiling as he explained how it works. He would remind us about going back to our proper stance by showing off an action. And everytime he did that, it made me smile. The action was just very funny!

Down the mountain we surfed. It certainly was tiring climbing up the mountain to go for another try. But why not use the ski lift? There was a long queue and i think I can climb faster. Just pant more! The ski lift ride was nice. The seat and structure was so simple, steel tubes around you like a roll cage and a cushioned seat. :)

Snowboarding is easy to learn. Just have to get used to it and keep reminding yourself on the good practices. I will definitely go for a second round if given the chance. If you get the chance, go for it! May he be an inspiration for you! :D

A Brand New 2010 Folks!

Coming back from overseas into 2010 is exciting. To wrap USA in word, it would have to be "Super"! Will definitely blog about the trip bit by bit once I get my pictures from Tourist Tan and David.

What was disappointing about the trip is that my 600+ photos were deleted. Do not know how it happened but it did. I certainly did not press 'OK' to 'ERASE ALL?'. Sigh. Must just remember the experience of what happened.

Just a quick update, started work again and it felt awesome! My army friends are a nice bunch. There is always something to laugh and joke about in our conversations. I feel really blessed to have formed this bond with them. :)

And guess what! The Army has given me my 2nd Kit Kat bar today! My rank looks like this now! Wheeee!!! Super.

Happy New Year Everyone!